Iconic Tribune Story Now a New Heggie/Scheer Opera • May 2024
Seattle, San Francisco, Chicago
Photo by Terry Lorant
Music of Remembrance celebrates its 25th Anniversary with a three-city tour of Before It All Goes Dark, a new opera by Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer. This one-act opera is based on the compelling true story of Gerald “Mac” McDonald, a gravely ill and deeply troubled Vietnam War veteran, which was first reported by Howard Reich in the Chicago Tribune.
Bass-baritone Ryan McKinny and mezzo-soprano Megan Marino star in this redemptive story of looted art and uncovered ancestry as it tours to stages in Seattle, San Francisco, and Chicago.
Seattle Times: Vietnam War vet discovers he’s heir to art stolen by Nazis; now it’s an opera
Chicago Tribune: Tribune story about Nazi-looted artwork gets the operatic treatment
NBC 5 Chicago: ‘Before it all Goes Dark' to close out season at the Chicago Opera Theater
WBEZ: From Chicago headlines, an eminent composer births a new opera about Nazi-looted art
The Forward: How my story about Nazi-looted art inspired an opera by one of America’s greatest composers
FOX 32 Chicago: New opera 'Before It All Goes Dark' tells incredible story first documented by Chicago Tribune reporter
KALW On the Arts: World Premiere of MOR’s ‘Before It All Goes Dark’
Mercury News: The Bay Area’s opera scene offers music in unexpected places
Chicago Crusader: ‘Before It All Goes Dark’ tells the story of a suburban Vet
Jewish Chicago Magazine: Family history, offbeat art, and music of different eras
Air Mail: Music of Remembrance presents Before It All Goes Dark
The Wall Street Journal: National Arts Roundup
Opera Now: ‘We all have a connection to the Holocaust’ – Before It All Goes Dark opera preview
Critical Acclaim
Photo by Terry Lorant
“The son of two Holocaust survivors, Howard Reich had tracked down a Vietnam veteran who was the sole heir to a valuable art collection that had been looted by the Nazis and was then held at a museum in Prague. Jake Heggie, a composer singularly attuned to the power of narrative knows when a great story has found him. The resulting one-act opera, Before It All Goes Dark, with a libretto by longtime Heggie collaborator Gene Scheer, is the team’s fifth commission by Music of Remembrance. The evening, which began with a heartfelt onstage conversation between Heggie and Reich, moderated by Mina Miller, and included a salon of period music by Czech composers who died in the concentration camps, offered a striking fusion of intensity and emotional range, historical context and dramatic immediacy. In a moment of eponymous foreshadowing, Mac, fully embodied by Ryan McKinny, seems poised at a fraught precipice — ‘the last thing you reach for, before it all goes dark.’ Heggie spins out the line in a long, poignant melisma that links Mac to his Jewish Uncle Emil, who collected the art before the Nazis took his paintings as well as his life. The evening delivered a rich experience. Heggie and Scheer have discovered an expansive story of layered themes that both captures and transcends its source material.”
–San Francisco Classical Voice
“The musical forces of Before It All Goes Dark are small—two singers, a seven-piece chamber ensemble. But the impact of Chicago Opera Theater’s performance could hardly have been more potent. The story of Mac explores antisemitism on subtle levels. Vividly portrayed by McKinny, Mac finds redemption of sorts at the end. But thanks to Scheer’s tightly focused libretto and Heggie’s evocative music, the wounds he suffers along the way resonate long after we leave the theater. The opera’s impact stems from the intimate simplicity of Heggie’s music and Scheer’s straightforward prose. The opera’s topic may be vast—the centuries-old hatreds that caused generations of a Jewish family to hide its past, the 20th-century antisemitism that loots an art collection and then denies an heir his rightful inheritance. But the focus is tight—how one man, Mac, has been irrevocably scarred by his family’s secrecy. Some of the libretto quotes directly from Reich’s interviews with Mac. By searingly exploring one man’s wounded heart, the work leaves us thinking of larger, universal issues of identity and acceptance.”
–Musical America
“‘Before It All Goes Dark’ is a remarkable work and a memorable one. This new, small opera is an incredible journey of transformation for Mac and a powerful drama set beautifully to music. Heggie’s music captures Mac’s despair when we first encounter him, and it develops slowly, like a smoldering fire that takes time to burst into flame. When Mac cries out to Emil, trying to understand the horrible course of his life, and grieving his death, it is a catharsis of immense power. Librettist Scheer has paired down Mac’s story from [Howard] Reich’s two-part Tribune series. He employs clear, plain language, rather than a more poetic turn, and this brings out the rough-edged Mac effectively. The [salon] of music by Czech composers who perished in the Holocaust was a marvelous idea and it was presented as if musicians had gathered in Emil’s home for a private salon, performed beautifully by the seven member Music of Remembrance Ensemble led by Joseph Mechavich. The beauty of the opera is that Mac does not remain a tourist in his own new life. He embraces Emil as a tragic ancestor and has an awakening when he studies some of the paintings in a collection that had been described as priceless. He takes nothing physically tangible from this experience — no family art or artifacts — yet he returns home a much richer man, even if still frustrated and angry.”
– Hyde Park Herald
“Viewers became witnesses of a moving, fact-based story of the Mac’s personal transformation as a result of the transforming power of art.”
–Polish Daily News
“The opera itself, in rough Chicago vernacular laced with expletives, expressed with muscular clarity by the principal singers, is a compact and relatively short piece. To create the stage production, projections are used, including scenes from Prague, the planes and trains that conveyed Mac to his meeting with destiny, the art museum, and Freund’s home and parlor. The program was extended to include an evening concert in Freund’s parlor, with eight short works by composers who died in the Holocaust. ‘Before It All Goes Dark’ has unquestionably captured something uniquely Chicago, yet universal in its emotional appeal.”
–Buzz Center Stage
“This opera is special in that it turns the story itself into artwork. With an inclusive concert of Holocaust-era music and projections that illuminate the audience with the power of art to transform, it lifts the performance out of the tragic history and gifts us with the lasting treasury of the paintings themselves.”
–Splash Magazines
“A new art form graced San Francisco’s Presidio Theatre one night before moving on to Chicago—a collaborative work that interweaves related themes—a semi-scripted “conversation,” a salon, and an opera. Five brilliant collaborators have created a structure that allows for a compelling theme—art deprivation as the result of the Holocaust—to resonate to the maximum. Before It All Goes Dark is worthy of many more performances.”
–Aisle Seat Review
“A tremendous achievement for Heggie, Scheer, Music of Remembrance and all the people involved. The score played an active role in the drama, especially in the instrumental parts that connected the scenes, and Scheer’s libretto was truly a great asset. The greatest contributions to the success of this premiere tour were the two soloists, both of whom gave their heart and soul to bring the story to life. Before It All Goes Dark not only teaches the dangers of letting history repeat itself, but also it demonstrates the transformative power of Art.”
– Parterre Box
“Before It All Goes Dark may be small in scale, but it packed an emotional punch. Librettist Scheer turns Reich’s stories into a poetic journey of self-discovery for Mac that demonstrates the transformative power of art. The score was trademark Heggie in its contemporary yet approachable style, inflected with elements of the blues and rock ’n roll. Just off his star turn as Joseph De Rocher in Heggie’s Dead Man Walking at the Metropolitan Opera this season, McKinny lent his powerful bass-baritone to the similarly troubled role of Mac. Heggie once again has written an appealing mezzo part that displayed Marino’s solid yet malleable voice to the best effect. A standout musical and dramatic moment came when Mac is shown Emil’s art collection in the basement of the museum. Looking at the artwork Emil lovingly and carefully selected, Mac wonders what it must be like to be chosen and loved—something missing from his childhood. The projections on the back wall came to life as animated images of Emil’s paintings and light swirled around the auditorium like an immersive art installation.”
–Chicago Classical Review
“Music of Remembrance staged the premiere of a bare-bones, brooding chamber opera by Jake Heggie, Before It All Goes Dark. You would think the [nearby] big-budget, visually flashy, popular Rossini favourite would have easily won all the laurels. However, it was Heggie’s new work that proved to be the more satisfying evening of music theatre. The frugal budget created a simple, sincere narrative that had a direct emotional effect due to its being sparingly scored and staged. Once Mac confronts the art and grapples with its expressive power, the story and music achieve an extraordinarily quiet and sweetly unsettling climax. It was here that Heggie’s score flourished, undulating with waves of eloquently pungent harmonies and orchestral colour. The towering performance of McKinny as Mac was an eloquently poignant performance with universal echoes, notwithstanding the chamber scale of this touching new opera.”
–Opera Magazine